Essay Example on Fake News Menace: New Pathways for Online News Verification

"Fake news" menace has become an obdurate problem, and reckoning with it requires the formulation of new pathways for online news verification and delivery. The attempts to moderate fake news through automated technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) are not developed enough to address this problem. Third party-information checking and media literacy institutions are meant to close the gap between platforms and the public interested, however, they are currently not well financially equipped to address this challenge (Stone, 2012). In chapter 13 of Deborah Stone's book, it is stated that rules, law enforcement, and regulatory agencies depend heavily on citizen complaints to get data about rule violations (Stone, 2012). However, citizens would regard a police department remiss if it did nothing to avert crime other than answering the telephone.

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Larry Bartels assesses the high levels of support for tax reductions ratified into law by President Bush in 2001. By doing that, he characterizes the views of "ordinary citizens" as lacking "an ethical basis", and is based on "simple-minded nature and sometimes misguided contemplations of self-interest (Bartels, 2005). He wraps up by stating that "the stout plurality support for British's tax cut is wholly derivable to simple obliviousness." Based on Stone notes on Larry Bartels, we can summarize that citizens perceived the information on budget cuts differently (Bartels, 1996). The Republican respondents were regarded as "most informed", and they supported the tax cuts, however, the Democrats that had misguided self-interests or better-informed individuals expressed negative views about the tax cut law (Bartels, 1996).

Larry Bertel's analysis shows that persuasion based on either rational ideal, and propaganda influenced how the citizens responded when asked whether the tax cut was a burden or favorable to them (Stone, 2012). Larry Bertel's statement shows that the thoughts of citizens are mostly influenced by propaganda or dependent thoughts based on political organizations. For instance, the Republican's followers were most informed as their officials enlightened their supporters on the benefits of supporting the already implemented tax cuts. Stone (2012) in chapter 14 delves more on the idea of rights in the polis; positive rights, normative rights, and procedural rights (Stone, 2012). A claim that is backed by the power of the state is known as a positive right. Normative rights are based on expectations of a given society and are derived from some source of morality, religion (Stone, 2012). Procedural rights describe the process by which decisions are made on behalf of citizens (Stone, 2012).

The Justification of Larry Bartels Comments as Noted by Deborah Stones

For over three decades now, the rate of economic inequality among the citizens has been augmenting. The portion of national income going to households has plummeted from 17.5% in 1975 to 13.8% in 2002 (Bartels, 2005). Bartels argued out that the provisions of the Bush tax cuts unreasonably benefitted the rich taxpayers. The tax cuts included a reduction in taxes on dividends and capital gains, and substantial elimination of the estate tax (Bartels, 2005). As per the projections conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total federal tax cut relieved the tax burden on wealthy citizens by 25% (Bartels, 2005). Larry Bertels indicated that most American citizens backed tax cuts not because they are unresponsive to economic inequality, but because they mainly lack to connect inequality and public policy (Bartels, 2005).

How This Decision Affected Citizens Thoughts About Access to Information

The idea of the tax cuts benefitting the rich people at the expense of the poor and middle-class citizens created a declining trust in the federal government or "electoral connection" on the minds of the middle-class citizens. (Bartels, 2005). A Harris Poll done in June 2003 elucidated that 50% thought the 2003 tax cut was an ideal thing, while 42% indicated that it would benefit the wealthy individuals (Bartels, 2005). Finally, 11% polled that it would help the middle class a great deal. Most citizens believe that the difference in terms of incomes between the wealthy and poor citizens has augmented in the past two decades (Bartels, 2005). It has also impacted how both the rich and middle-class citizens access information. The middle-class citizens are often subjected to "fake" information from politicians who tend to utilize them during campaign periods, and once they are elected they go-ahead to implement policies that favor only the rich citizens (Bartels, 2005). The rich citizens in America do not pay a fair portion of taxes and they receive better treatment in the courts than the poor and middle citizens do (Bartels, 2005).

I do agree with the authors of the "Dead Reckoning" on their view that moderating "fake news" will help more than just news. Caplan, Robyn, Hanson & Donovan (2018) defined the term "fake news" as content that should be considered illegal due to its close association with liberal political leanings (Caplan et al., 2018). For example, President Trump has often used explainable mistakes in a commentary to delegitimate entire news outlets, and he has mainly targeted CNN. When implementing interventions to deal with "fake news" there should be a detailed communication technology, and relevant stakeholders such as Free Press, and Center for Democracy and Technology (Caplan et al., 2018).

These new interventions should involve protections from digital harms for upcoming consumers, content regulators, and journalists. The main worry is not that "fake news" will overtake the real content, but it will affect the authenticity and democracy of the sources where the information has been obtained (Caplan et al., 2018). Journalists and content moderators should ensure they deliver credible and verifiable information to the citizens. To further eliminate the spread of "fake news" the federal government and relevant stakeholders should map new routes, develop new technologies, and enforce new standards geared towards creating a global community that will be responding to the spread of fake news (Caplan et al., 2018).

Despite the legal protection for self-interest and detailed schemas for regulating commercial news, platform companies seem to be reluctant to moderate misguided information and hate speech content (Caplan et al., 2018). The only daunting task is researchers do not have a scale to authenticate how much information websites remove, censor, or de-prioritize content on any given day. Another challenge lies in constitutional law, where the advocators of the First Amendment have little interest in the growing spread of misleading content (Caplan et al., 2018). However, many news source outlets are trying to familiarize themselves with how they mobilize and work collaboratively to strengthen their credibility and offer a signal of honesty of content across the social media and search engines (Caplan et al., 2018).

"Fake news" is more than just a menace for mainstream and social media companies. However, it is proliferation points towards deepening epistemic and social divides in the production, consumption, and scrutinization of news and information (Caplan et al., 2018). Market-based techniques, such a "trust and verification" efforts are concrete examples of creating a global community that will concentrate on enhancing quality signals, such as implementing checks-marks to the content being displayed (Caplan et al., 2018). Other measures include efforts to identify and then remove defaming information along with plausible measures to demonetize content will also help to end the era of misinformation (Caplan et al., 2018). Finally, legislative and regulatory solutions, that need the execution of common sets of standards, which outline clearly the content that should or should not be displayed on the mainstream or social media sites (Caplan et al., 2018).

Conclusion

In conclusion, "fake news" is more than a problem within the society as more content being released by mainstream media sites has a close association with liberal political leaning. The recent methods to detect "fake news" has been reserved on machine learning systems. These new interventions should involve protections from digital harms for upcoming consumers, content regulators, and journalists as fake news will affect the authenticity and democracy of the sources where the information has been obtained (Caplan et al., 2018). Finally, The idea of the tax cuts benefitting the rich people at the expense of the poor and middle-class citizens created a declining trust in the federal government or "electoral connection" on the minds of the middle-class citizens.

References

Bartels, L. M. (1996). Uninformed votes: Information effects in presidential elections. American Journal of Political Science, 40, 194-230. Retrieved from: http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels2.pdf

Bartels, L. M. (2005). Homer gets a tax cut: Inequality and public policy in the American mind. Perspectives on Politics, 3(1), 15-31. Retrieved from: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20031216_Bartels.pdf

Caplan, R., Hanson, L., & Donovan, J. (2018). Dead Reckoning Navigating Content Moderation After "Fake News". Data & Society. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Dead%20Reckoning%20Navigating%20Content%20Moderation%20After%20Fake%20News.pdf

Stone, D. (2012). Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. - Chapter 13-14, "Rules" and "Facts" Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Policy%20Paradox_The%20Art%20of%20Political%20Decision%20Making.pdf